▶ Watch this as a film on SugarCoach TV — live 24/7
Orange juice built its reputation on being pure, natural, packed with vitamin C - the drink your parents poured with breakfast feeling virtuous. But strip away the marketing and look at the label, and orange juice sits far closer to a can of cola than either of them would like to admit. Tonight, we open the carton and count the teaspoons.
A typical 200ml glass of orange juice contains around 18 grams of sugar - that's roughly four and a half teaspoons, dissolved so smoothly you never taste the grit. Ounce for ounce, that's close to a can of cola, which carries about five teaspoons in the same volume. The orange gave up its fibre back at the factory, leaving mostly juice and sugar behind.
Apple juice often edges past orange, with a typical 200ml glass carrying around 20 grams of sugar - five teaspoons, give or take, depending on the blend. It reads as wholesome because it's fruit, but the sugar arrives exactly like any other sweet drink, fast and unaccompanied by the fibre a whole apple would bring along for the ride.
A shop-bought fruit smoothie can pack even more, with a typical 250ml bottle holding around 28 grams of sugar - seven teaspoons, from fruit that's been pulped rather than chewed. Blending breaks down the fibre that would normally slow things down, so the sugar hits your system almost as quickly as it would from a fizzy drink of the same size.
A 330ml can of cola carries around 35 grams of sugar - roughly eight and a half teaspoons. Nobody calls it a health drink, and it's never pictured next to a breakfast table. Yet gram for gram, it isn't wildly different from the juices we've just covered - the real gap between them isn't the sugar, it's the story each one gets told with.
Cranberry juice drink tastes sharp, so it feels like it must be low in sugar - the opposite is often true. A typical 200ml glass can carry around 24 grams, roughly six teaspoons, because sugar gets added to make the naturally bitter berry drinkable at all. Tartness, it turns out, is no guide whatsoever to how much sugar is actually in the glass.
The simplest swap isn't a different drink, it's the whole fruit itself. An orange has a similar amount of sugar to a small glass of its own juice, but the fibre still intact slows everything down, and you get full on it long before you could drink the equivalent in juice. Water with a squeeze of real fruit works well too, if it's a drink you're after.
Start your transformation — try SugarCoach free, then £2.99/weekGeneral lifestyle education, not medical advice — personal medical decisions belong with your GP or pharmacist.